Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

In Struggle!

IPANA takes path of opportunism

First Published:in Struggle! No. 123, September 5, 1978Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul SabaCopyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

The second Congress of the Indian People’s Association of North America, held in Montreal during August, was the occasion for this organization to demonstrate its growing opportunism and hostility to Marxism-Leninism.

In the public meeting on August 15th to close its Congress, IPANA affirmed its strong support for the counter-revolutionary “theory of three worlds”. Naturally this delighted the petit-bourgeois nationalists of the CAPT and the leaders of the so-called Canadian “Communist” League who along with a few dozen East indian immigrants made up the audience of this meeting.

With the definitive adoption of the “three worlds theory”, IPANA has now marked its agreement with an alliance between the people, the capitalists and the imperialists and a repudiation of the revolutionary line.

At the same time the IPANA leaders also decided to reject the solidarity message sent by IN STRUGGLE! – a message they themselves had asked for – and to refuse IN STRUGGLE! the right to distribute its newspaper or sell its literature. They even pretended to be shocked that our message attacked the reactionary “three worlds theory”, although it is some time now that we have been publicly denouncing this new form of revisionism. These actions by the IPANA leaders clearly show the choice they have made: to promote opportunism in alliance with groups like the CAPT and the League and to move onto the offensive against those who defend Marxism-Leninism.

IPANA was established as an organization of solidarity with the Indian revolution and it was on the basis of agreement with this orientation in the past that IN STRUGGLE! tried to collaborate with IPANA. But by their recent actions the leaders of IPANA have shown that they are splitters and wreckers of the movement for revolutionary solidarity with the oppressed masses of India and enemies of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.

IN STRUGGLE! is committed to developing genuine proletarian internationalism in the Canadian proletariat and its allies, including support for the Indian revolution. In this work we will collaborate fully with our foreign Marxist-Leninist comrades and with all genuine anti-imperialist and anti-fascist forces. But we have no intention of pretending that isolated groups of intellectuals like the CAPT and IPANA, justifying their reformist nationalism with the “three worlds theory”, and coordinating their opportunism under the organizational umbrella of the League, represent either the Canadian immigrant proletariat or the revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist forces of the world. The events which took place at the recent IPANA Congress clearly show that the development of proletarian internationalalism can only succeed with the struggle to expose and defeat the influence of these opportunist tendencies.